McConnell: 'Senate can be better'

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell delivered a blistering critique of the Senate on Wednesday, signaling how he would run the chamber if Republicans seize control in this year’s midterm elections.

Calling the Senate a “permanent sort of shirts-against-skins contest,” McConnell outlined his three main Senate prescriptions if the GOP wins the majority: allowing a “more robust” committee process, permitting more amendments on the floor, and holding a longer Washington work week.

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“I’m not here to claim that we are without fault,” McConnell — who himself is up for reelection in 2014 — said in a 40-minute speech on the Senate floor, accompanied by most Senate Republicans in a show of unity. “But I am certain of one thing — I’m absolutely certain of one thing — that the Senate can be better than it is.”

Partisan tenors in the Senate appear at all-time highs since Democrats unilaterally pushed through the so-called “nuclear option” in November that changed the rules on most executive and judicial branch nominations.

McConnell and his counterpart, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), got off to a frosty start when the Kentucky Republican criticized Reid for limiting amendments to the bill that would extend unemployment insurance for three months.

In his speech Wednesday, McConnell continued with that message, saying that senators would “of course retaliate” and crank up the partisan rancor in the Senate if they aren’t allowed votes on amendments. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has noted that there are 13 amendments proposed by Republicans to the unemployment insurance bill, McConnell said.

“But alas, I expect that opportunity will not be allowed because one person who’s allowed to get priority recognition can prevent us from getting any amendments or even worse still, pick our amendments for us — to decide which of our amendments are okay and which aren’t,” McConnell said.

McConnell himself has proposed paying for the unemployment benefits bill by suspending the individual mandate in the health care law, which Reid called a “chicanery.”

In his own remarks on the floor Wednesday morning, Reid tried to refute complaints from the GOP about amendments, saying that the share of amendments that Republicans have offered during his tenure as majority leader has been greater than that during the time of former Senate Majority Leaders Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) or Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

“So, Republicans should stop trying to justify their opposition to helping Americans in need with false claims about my leadership of this institution,” Reid said. After McConnell’s speech, Reid dismissed his counterpart’s remarks as a “distraction” from “their unconscionable stand on the issues that matter most to the middle class.”